text: In her early work with Soddy, Hitchins helped to prepare radium standards for the calibration of gold-leaf electroscopes, used to measure radioactivity.
  After she returned to work with Soddy in 1921, Hitchins further refined measurements of the half-life of ionium, and determined ratios of thorium isotopes in mineral samples. She also developed methods for extracting radioactive elements from minerals and ores.
  Soddy wrote of her: